


Crazy Eight

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [29]
Category: The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997)
Genre: 1950s, Acceptance, Addiction, Age Difference, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Attraction, BBW, Christian Character, Con Artists, Consensual Underage Sex, Drama, Drama & Romance, F/M, For Adults Only, Gambling, Growing Up, Loss of Virginity, Love, Love Stories, Melancholy, Older Man/Younger Woman, Overweight, Pool & Billiards, Pool Table Sex, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Virginity, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:02:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22802248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: "Cherry" Mary asks me to do a favor for her and meet with a man named Harry to which I reluctantly agree. I soon discover to my humiliation that it was all a ploy to punish the man that inadvertently caused her beloved Neal Cassady to wind up in jail. This man, Harry, isn't so pleased to see a disapproving fat girl meeting him and not the thin and wild Mary.When Harry kisses me in jest, however, I follow him to the pool hall which he frequents out of spite. We form an odd friendship as I watch and learn that the pool playing barfly is a damaged man drinking himself into an early grave and Harry forms an equally odd plot: teach me how to play pool in order to con a couple of wealthy dupes.After the big game is over, however, I am faced with the sad knowledge that I cannot save the man that I now love from slowly and willingly killing himself. For life is a prize that Harry is no longer interested in winning.*This fic really isn't the most widely read of the ones in this series. I guess, that goes hand in hand with the sad fact that "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" wasn't widely seen. But I love this little story. And I do love Keanu's performance as Harry in the film that it is based on.
Relationships: Cherry Mary (The Last Time I Committed Suicide) & Me, Harry (The Last Time I Committed Suicide) & Cherry Mary, Harry (The Last Time I Committed Suicide) & Neal Cassady, Harry (The Last Time I Committed Suicide)/Me, Neal Cassady & Cherry Mary
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Comments: 8
Kudos: 4





	1. Animosity Blooming Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> I have always been attracted to alcoholics. I think it's probably the urge inside to heal and offer some comfort. It may also be that I can understand in a way even though I don't drink. I understand pain and the urge to be numbed or to run away from it.
> 
> I like Harry a lot. And think he's very cute. I've heard people say Keanu was fat in the film, including Keanu himself, but I thought it he was just chunkier. That makes me worried, though, because if he was fat for this and I am bigger...what does that make me? :(

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I meet Harry after a manipulative request from Cherry Mary.

When Mary told me to go and meet some guy for her I never should have done it. We were never that close. Just because we lived near to each other and she was a year older didn't give her the right to look to me anytime that she needed a favor or take advantage of my kindness and her belief that I was virtually unable to say no when I thought somebody was in desperate need of help. 

"I just need you to do this one thing for me," she whispered to me under a moonless sky. She had caught me going into my house after taking out the trash. "I'm in trouble...you know the kind...I told this guy I'd give him money to help me out...if you know what I mean."

I guessed that the trouble was a baby and that the help the guy was going to give her was an abortion. It struck me as a riot that Mary was a Catholic and contemplating ending her pregnancy early but I was a Protestant and would rather die first. Of course, I was a virgin and fat too while she had said farewell to her chastity a while ago and was thin and beautiful. I doubted though if I _had_ been as gorgeous as she was it would have made any difference: I wasn't going to let any baby pay because I let my hormones get the better of me.

"The thing is I don't wanna go through with it...but I can't tell him that. Would you go and do it for me?"

I wanted to say no but suddenly felt proud of Mary for doing the right thing, at least.

"I'm thinking he won't beat up a big girl," she added.

I wasn't so proud of her then but sighed and agreed to it anyway.

* * *

The moon was still not showing its face as I walked to the address written on the piece of paper Mary had handed to me. It wasn't in a part of town I particularly felt comfortable in but I told myself that I'd be okay. I had no money on me so a mugging would be pointless and I felt too fat to invite the attention of a rapist. Rape wasn't about desire I had heard but still I doubted that one would desire to take the trouble to wrestle with my bulk when some thinner girl would be far easier to drag down an alleyway.

I angrily thought of Mary again, worrying what type of mother she'd make if she couldn't even handle her own problems. I'd heard that only a few months ago there had been a stink when her mother had listened into a phone conversation between her and some guy named Neal something or the other. It had been the dirty type and the guy had been old enough to be busted and dragged off to jail. I wondered if that was her baby's father.

Arriving at the address, I noticed with more unease that it was a bar. Taking a deep breath, I headed inside, looking for a man named Harry.

The easiest thing to do was ask the bartender. He was helpful in the fact that he told me that most guys that came in were called Harry, Tom or Dick. I'd have asked him what about the Johns but he looked like he was thinking about throwing me out for being underage anyway.

"There is a Harry here, though," he stated. "That sorry mess over there."

He cast a quick glance at a guy in a booth drinking and I took the hint and let my feet lead me to the man. The beer held in his hand interested this Harry more than my approach and he drank it like he was in a hurry to see the bottom of the glass. The man was attractive and in his late twenties, possibly early thirties. He had dark hair and sweet brown eyes which seemed coated with an overabundance of moisture. His skin was pale but had a glistening unhealthy tinge to it. It was not very surprising: he smelled and looked of endless rounds of alcohol and cigarettes and I stood in front of him for a while before he even noticed me.

When he did he looked bemused, no doubt, taking in the sight of the large teenage girl that had come to pay him a visit. I knew what he was thinking. My face was kind of pretty, pale skin, widely spaced green-gray eyes and wavy brown hair; it was my overweight body which more or less screwed things up. Harry was overweight a bit himself but it looked good on him. Besides with men it was often okay to be heavier if you weren't a movie star or athlete.

With a woman it often just became a joke and a turn off.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"Mary says she can't go through with it," I stated abruptly and turned around to leave. His hand shot out quickly, preventing me. "Wait a second sister."

I sighed and turned around. Looking at the ceiling and not his face, I explained a little more in detail. "She doesn't want an abortion. She wants to keep the baby."

Hearing nothing but sensing that he was staring at me, I lowered my eyes to find him torn between laughing and cursing. "That's what she told you? That I was to do some back alley job on her and she went and got cold feet?"

I nodded my head. "That's not what this is?" I said, clueing in that I had been deceived.

"No," Harry said, shaking his head slowly. "Cherry Mary said she'd meet me here for some fun. If not she'd send over a girl who would be willing to. Are you willing to, sister?"

I swiftly and violently shook my head.

"Well I'm grateful for that," Harry commented. "Looking at you I don't think I'd have enough strength, willpower or energy."

The words hurt even though they had come from a stranger. As did the realization that Mary had sent me here as some kind of a joke: she knew her friend wouldn't be interested in a big girl like me.

"Good joke," I mumbled. "Real funny."

Harry took a swig and laughed, obviously in agreement. "Punishment is what it is."

"So now I'm punishment too?" I inquired, sadly.

The man looked up at me. "I caused her real lover boy, Neal, to get arrested. It wasn't my fault. If she'd kept better tabs on her mother she would have known that the old crow was keeping a bird's eye view on the whole situation. Still Cherry Mary demands retribution and you, _little_ sister, are it."

I flopped down in the chair opposite to him. Being thought of as bad enough looking to be a curse called down upon a guy to hurt him was devastating.

"But, I guess, if Mary isn't about to show, and no other worthy damsel is either, I might as well go off and rack up some balls so the night is not a complete waste."

Tears were on my cheeks. I felt them sliding down and I wanted to sob. Harry saw them too. Before I was aware of what was happening, I felt lips devouring mine and the taste of beer flooding my mouth. Realizing that the man was kissing me, I pushed him away in panic.

I looked up to see Harry grinning affably down at me. "So you didn't waste your time either..."

"Erin," I spat, wiping my mouth.

"So you didn't waste your time either, Erin," he repeated with the inclusion of my name this time.

I watched him walking towards the bar's exit.

Anger flooded my usually calm brain as alcohol still invaded and coursed through my mouth. The drunken, rude stranger had stolen my first kiss and waltzed out the door like he had done me a favor! Without rhyme or reason, I hurried after him, intent on screwing up the rest of the night as Mary and he had done with mine by getting me involved in their twisted little game.

I caught sight of Harry's white shirted and tan trouser wearing back stumbling down the street and followed him from a few steps behind. The moon had been forgotten about and now all I cared about was finding this man wherever he went. When he slipped in to yet another bar, I shouldn't have been too surprised. From the bar's window, I watched as Harry ordered a beer and retreated to the back of the place and out of eyesight. Bursting in the doors, I garnered a few looks which made my natural shyness flash but wasn't enough to dissuade me from searching for Cherry Mary's not quite good friend. He was at a pool table, preparing to make what appeared to be his first shot.

Seeing me, he swore and tilted his head. "Little sister get ye out and straight to thine bed. It is near your bedtime and I don't fancy spending the night in jail."

"My mother doesn't pay that strict attention of me," I commented, spotting a barstool in the corner and going towards it. "She trusts me as opposed to Mary's mother with her daughter."

"Old Mary's mother," he crooned and took a shot. By his expression he didn't look too displeased by the result.

"We both agree that Mary shouldn't be trusted, right?" I remarked, folding my arms.

Harry laughed. "Sure...If she could, I'd be with her and not chewing the breeze with you."

" _Touche_ ," I thought.

"Yes," I'd be ripping in to that wonderful red tunnel she has between her wonderful, soft white doors right about now..." He added smoothly and I knew that he was doing it to shock me in the hope of sending me scurrying off and leaving him alone.

But I wouldn't bite.

"And I wouldn't have to watch you having to play with your stick and balls instead," I returned haughtily.

We stared at each other then: Harry suddenly resting the pool stick on the grimy floor and me with my over large ass perched precariously on a stool too small for it.

I don't know which one of us smiled first. All I knew was that when we did all seemed to be forgiven. The man resumed his pool game and I stayed on the stool watching him, conversation flowing unexpectedly and easy between two mismatched people, a heavy drinking, womanizing con man of the world and the underage, shy overweight, good little Christain girl whom had decided to keep him company.

* * *

I kept him company often after that.

I discovered that while Harry had many friends his best one, this Neal Cassady, had up and split as he had worded it. Harry felt no rancour; he seemed glad infact that Cassady hadn't become tied down to some woman named Joan.

I was told about their friendship as Harry played his pool and drank his glasses of beer. The impression that if alcohol were to leave his side so easily, the pool player would not take it quite so well was evident to me pretty well from the second day of our acquaintance. An empty glass was a sin to the man and he often used me to go and fetch him another full one when it became too low.

My mother was noticing that I smelled of beer and cigarettes whenever I returned home to her and my sister. But as I had told my new friend she trusted me. My eyes weren't red or watery, my breath didn't reek of alcohol, my speech was fine nor did I stagger when I walked. All the things that were dead giveaways of having a drinking problem and which belonged painfully to Harry.

I longed to tell him that maybe he should stop but I soon found that this created an air of discomfort between us.

"My little sister cannot be my _mother_!" he informed me angrily one evening as he made another shot. This one didn't turn out as well as he had desired. "See what it does to my game," he snapped. "I allow your pleasingly, plump personage access to my world on the one condition that you don't try to change me. You stay a girl and not a damned woman with all of their rules and nagging and we can continue on riding this strange and unexpected detour."

I shut my mouth, not wanting to be exiled from the relationship that had occurred by accident between us.

"Besides I don't play father to you," he stated.

"My father left me a few years ago," I commented.

"We have that in common," Harry snickered as he tried to find a way out of a tricky situation, the black ball too close to the left corner pocket. "Well you let big brother protect you anyway. Make sure you walk the straight line of virtuehood and let all the other girls be sluts for me to ravage."

I watched as Harry worked his magic on the green felt and saved himself yet again. His words didn't shock me. We were open and naughty often in our talks ever since that first night. Good etiquette and proper dialogue had been forsaken for free speech.

"You ravage any lately?" I inquired, not liking the twinge of jealousy that flooded me.

Harry kept his eyes on the balls. "Here and there."

I had once overheard from a girl in school that alcohol effected a man's ability to perform sexually and I wondered if Harry ever had that problem. Thoughts about helping him overcome it or simply lying by his side in bed together if I couldn't suddenly filled my mind and I kicked my chubby, stocking clad legs trying to forget them.

"So those legs you are swinging to and fro," Harry stated sanctimoniously, casting an eye on them and their movement. "Big Brother wants to make sure you keep them locked together. No..."

He looked at me with mock seriousness and stuck his pool stick into one of the pool table's pockets and slid it in and out suggestively.

"Something tells me if the stick is that skinny and the hole is that wide neither participants is going to get much out of it," I replied with feigned innocence.

Harry blurted out laughing and I felt good until he asked me to refill his beer for him and my happiness faded as quickly as I knew that the new beer would.

* * *

"Damn jukebox is broken," Harry stated tensely as I came to watch him play after school one day.

Sometimes he would send me over to put a nickel in it so he could listen to music while he played or not have to listen to the tunes he didn't like but the other patrons insisted on listening to incessantly. He had become so used to it by then he became rather upset on the rare occasion it was busted.

"I can sing a song for you," I offered, not liking to see him so upset, fearing that something else was bothering him too. I had sensed long ago that many things in his past had damaged the man. His drinking was the way that he chose to escape or not even have to face or think about them at all. 

The man lifted his eyes from off of the balls scattered here and there on the pool table and saw me sitting on the barstool, still dressed in the white blouse and green plaid skirt of my school uniform. Grinning widely, Harry laid his stick on the table and strolled over to where I sat on top of the stool.

"Now that's an interesting suggestion," he remarked. "But what type of makeshift jukebox would you be?"

He started to unbutton the first few buttons on the top of my clean white blouse. I let him because I could tell it was just one of those brazen little games that we were now comfortable playing with each other. My chest in its plain white bra now exposed, Harry fished around inside of his pocket and pulled out a nickel. He brought it to my cleavage and started to rub it against one breast, the side of his finger with the nail, brushing against the other. It felt cold to the touch and sent a shiver from its icy surface throughout my body.

"Maybe I should put my money in here and see just what type of tune you play," Harry joked, still caressing me with his piece of spare change.

The feel of the cold nickel was now making my nipples come out and stand on edge despite the distance between them and my cleavage. It was the first time that my body had ever been touched in that particular way and even if it was just done as a joke my body couldn't tell that. I tried to keep the blush from off of my face in embarrassment and the fact that my breasts were responding to his touch. In fact, they weren't the only part of my body feeling what he was doing with his stupid nickel; there was a throbbing starting between my legs that I knew was sexual excitement.

But Harry saw my reaction, heard and saw the way I swallowed harshly, read my bated breath from the way my breasts were rising and falling irregularly, as they trembled also, and then went to see the peaks protruding through my thin bra and shirt. I shuddered as he stared at them in a daze, his bleary eyes hypnotized. My shudder brought his gaze back to my eyes and he saw my unwanted arousal now clearly displayed, and a look that both pleaded with him to stop and begged with more conviction for him to continue.

His rubbing with the nickel became more slow, more sensuous and we both knew that this was no longer one of our stupid little games.

My nipples became even harder as Harry let the nickel drop and started to caress my breast with his fingertip. His hand dipped in farther, finding the swollen part that had earned his attention and he began to take it between his finger and thumb and both massage and pinch it slowly. I moaned and shifted on the stool, the pressure between my legs growing wonderfully and something beginning to feel wet down there as well. He was bringing his face down to touch the pale mountains of my breasts with his lips when we both heard two people coming closer. Harry ran for the pool table as I buttoned up my blouse.

It turned out to be two friends of his and he cast some "Hi brothers," their way in greeting as he bent over the table oddly. Though they could not see it, I knew that the man was hiding his erection from them. As the two guys, a Bill and Fred started to talk, momentarily arguing with each other, Harry looked up at me and gave me the strangest look that was half apologetic, half horny but mostly just confused.

"I gotta go home," I said, hopping down from the stool, my legs feeling kind of weak and the wetness leaking from out of my panties and smearing both thighs as they brush together while I walked away.

"Bye Erin," he said, his voice trying to sound normal but forgetting to use the usual little sister endearment.

"Bye Harry," I mumbled.

As I walked away I heard Bill and Fred asking who the fat chick was.

"Just a little sister," Harry replied, finally remembering his name for me in my absence.

"Knew she couldn't be a lay," Fred, I thought, stated with a laugh. "You might be a sorry sight but you are not _that_ far gone, brother."

To his credit, and my relief, Harry muttered a "Quit it."

"Only other option was that she plays pool but a chick playing, and one that size, is crazy, brother," Bill commented and I was on the opposite side of the door before I heard another word.

* * *

Back in my bedroom, I rushed to my mirror, unbuttoned my blouse and fished around inside for what I was looking for. I had felt it jingling around with my jiggling flesh as I had practically ran home but now it was giving me trouble collecting it. Finding it nestled underneath my left breast, I pulled it out and looked at it lovingly. I raised my head to the reflection and saw a kind of pretty girl, whom was regrettablely very much overweight, tenderly holding a spare piece of change, one that would normally be lost down the cushions in a sofa not between the cushions of my breasts, like it was infact a million dollars.

I went to my jewelry box and opened it. A ballerina spun around as Beautiful Dreamer played. I used to watch the little dancer and as a laugh woul pull her fabric tutu up and down her long, slim legs. Later she had her own revenge, just like Cherry Mary had, by making me suffer because she represented a little fat girl's dreams of being thin and beautiful: dreams which in all likelihood would remain only dreams. Carefully and reverently I placed the nickel beside my equally cherished and precious gold plated cross and touched it gently before closing the box, stopping the dancer in her revolutions and halting the song before it hit its next note.


	2. Friendship Blooming Idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry decides to use me to con his two friends and I catch an unexpected and unwanted glimpse into the depths of his alcoholism.

I didn't know what to expect when I returned to the bar and saw Harry again. It wasn't the following day but it wasn't out of the ordinary for days to pass before I showed up at the bar to see him. Nor was it unusual for Harry to have been kicked out for a few days due to poor behavior or his tab becoming too high. He always found a way to pay it, however. Gambling was a lesser addiction to his drinking but existed all the same and he had some luck with it. Maybe if he hadn't he'd have received the opportunity to get sober or clean more often.

Excitement mixed with dread when I finally did find the strength to return; my fondness for the man made it impossible for me to stay out of his company for too long. My mind, most of my time away, had been filled with thoughts of him anyway. I remembered vividly each stroke his finger had made on my breast and how badly I regretted that the two men had interrupted him before his lips had found their way too.

Has they had been planning to do.

The memory of the incident had kept me awake at night and I kept envisioning what it would be like when we saw each other again. Would it be awkward for us both? Would he avoid looking at me from shyness? I hated the possibility that he would say the word "sorry" because then I would feel that he regretted touching me. In my most happiest scenarios he declared his undying love for me, proposed marriage and took me back to his place to finally complete the act of making love which I felt we had already started.

Not that I even knew that the man _had_ a place. I'd only ever seen him at this bar or that. His clothes were often the same and never once had he actually mentioned living in a house or an apartment.

When I finally set foot in the bar again, and made my way to the pool table and Harry, I did not expect him to do what he ended up doing:

Ignore the whole thing ever happened.

"Why hello little sister," he said after a glance and an affable grin. When both had been offered he simply returned his attention back to his solitary game.

"Hi Harry," I greeted tentatively and sat back on my familiar barstool.

"Why you've been so notably absent?" he inquired without so much as looking at me, choosing to concentrate on a stray ball of yellow instead.

I knew that Harry wasn't a stupid man. Surely the reason must have occurred to him. A fat, shy girl like myself being felt up by her only real male friend. The thought had to have crossed his mind. Yet staring at him at his game, so calm and casual in contrast to my pounding heart, I had to wonder for a moment if the whole event had even happened. He was acting like nothing had changed between us and that my absence was a mystery to him. Maybe it had all been in my mind I worried.

No.

There was a nickel in my jewelry box, one I had looked at a million times, to tell me otherwise.

"I...I had things to do."

He stopped his game and placed his pool cue on the floor and stared at me. "No deaths in the family? No illness?"

I shook my head thinking that maybe all the drinking had damaged his memory and he honestly couldn't remember what had happened.

Then his face looked suddenly so serious, past all the cigarette smoke, as he looked at me and asked in a voice so soft that it didn't seem to belong to him at all, "Everthing all _right_?"

I knew then that he remembered perfectly. That he was as frightened as I was in a way. Was everything all right after he had touched me he meant. Was everything all right and the same between us? It was not a sorry. He wasn't expressing a desire for it not to have happened but it was a compassionate urge to make sure that I was okay. Apparently he knew that it was the first sexual thing that I had ever experienced in my life. I wasn't a conquest or a mere place to place his angry organ until it had its fill and shot off. I wasn't just a girl to him, in other words. Harry really cared for me.

It was a glimpse into the fact that our friendship had come to mean as equally as much to him as it did to me. So much so that Harry hoped he hadn't spoiled it somehow.

I nodded slowly and smiled reassuringly. "Everything's all right."

"Good," he said, an honest and gratitude filled smile spreading happily across his face.

He turned back to playing pool and things seemed back to normal.

"You remember those two guys that came here the other day?" he asked after a few minutes of silence broken only by the sound of balls meeting on the green felt.

"Bill and Fred?" I asked, pulling their names out of the recesses of recollection.

"That be the brothers to which I am referring," Harry confirmed. "Well seeing them placed a funny little idea in my brain, little sister."

"You have a brain?" I teased.

He looked at me with fake wounded pride and walked towards me with a gaze of equally feigned reproach. Dropping both falsehoods he leaned towards me conspiratorially. "How would you like to help me part them from a few of the lazy dollar bills they have overcrowding their pockets, Erin?" he whispered.

"How?" I asked skeptically.

Harry straightened up again and motioned towards his beloved pool table.

"Pool?" I laughed, folding my arms.

"A little two against two eightball," he grinned and went to lean against the table.

"I don't know how to play," I stated anxiously.

"So I'll teach you," the hustler countered. "They told me themselves they didn't think you could. You want to prove them wrong?"

That Harry hadn't mentioned the men insulting my weight touched me. I felt my heart falling a little bit more in love with him than it previously had been. For love was what I felt for the man. There hadn't really ever been any doubt even before he had stirred my body into waking sexually by a touch done out of fun.

"Okay," I agreed.

"Get thee off of thy perch then, little sister, and come to your brother," Harry stated opening his arms wide. "He has much to teach you."

Shyly I left my stool to go to him, realizing as I did how it had come to represent familiarity and safety to me. Even when the man had been feeling my chest, I felt it was by my rules and my personal control. In Harry's world of pool, women, booze, money and cigarettes it alone belonged to me. Leaving it, I felt that I was entering a world I had previously only witnessed from a window. Now my friend meant to initiate me into some other more adult land.

And I gladly accepted the invitation.

* * *

Making more excuses to leave the house more often was not too difficult. The library was as good of an excuse as any and my mother and older sister bought the lie. Although sister was a bit more doubtful than mother. Or maybe she was just disapproving. I loved her dearly but she had always had this way of making me feel small and not as righteous as she was. I could remember one of my Birthday parties, when I had to have been about eight years old, and she'd cast her eyes judgementally on the way that I had been sitting. My legs were a little parted and she offered me a prissy know-it-all glare and crossed her thin legs in demonstration of how it _should_ be done. She hadn't seemed to realize that for a big girl like myself such an action was difficult and when achieved very uncomfortable; my legs didn't want to stay in place and my belly felt painfully restrained. 

Despite her probing stares, though, she seemed to just accept eventually that I was off somewhere reading or writing like I used to do before the night Mary had approached me outside of the house and I had met with Harry for the first time.

Continuing to meet with my friend and new billiard instructor was easy, I soon discovered.

Learning the game he was supposed to be teaching me, however, was not.

While I was more graceful on my feet than some girls my weight, my eyesight wasn't too strong and I didn't wear glasses. My coordination left a lot to be desired too. I saw that Harry knew this also when I caught him rubbing his face in frustration after I had sunk the white ball for the hundredth time.

"Tell me what the plan is again?" I asked, hitting the stick against the floor in my own exasperation.

Harry took a deep breath before he opened his mouth to explain. "When you are good enough, I challenge Fred and William to a game of Eightball. The both of them against you and I. If it was just me playing one of them they'd never accept it; they know I'm too good. They'll see you as a handicap however. They already said as much."

The hustler fetched the sunken ball from out of the pocket.

"Because of my size," I stated, peering down at my round, protruding belly.

"Because they are closed minded fools," Harry professed as he placed the ball on the table and preformed a skillfull shot; the one he had intended for me to do.

Watching my friend and thinking of the two men he intended to dupe spoiling our sole romantic interlude, I suddenly realized that Harry had been avoiding touching me as we maneuvered around the table of green. To help fix my gaping errors he could have easily positioned my body or arms in the way that would have better aided me in our mutual quest to improve my skill. Instead he wouldn't even dare to hover a finger an inch from my plump flesh. 

"Harry," I started. "Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot, little sister," he replied doing the same, sinking another desired ball.

"Have you ever been in love?"

He snickered without looking at me. "Only as long as it takes me to plant my seed and offer a prayer to Dionysus that nothing comes to grow."

"Do you even believe in it?" I asked, studying his face and seeing little to convince me that he did.

"My belief in it vanished about the same time as dear old dad did. Right about then I realized that most any man and woman could have a kid, one that was unwanted, and that love, whatever that truly was, had nothing to do with it. Generally I try not to believe in words that have a O in them these days. They are a void in which all of you can become lost and you lose your very self...love...God...they both are very dangerous things that really don't exist."

I wandered over to the barstool and hopped up on it once more. I didn't like when the hustler said anything offensive towards the God I loved, as he had quite a few times already. My pity for Harry in that moment, however, outweighed my anger. "That's sad though...to never have been in love," I commented.

He shrugged but there was an obvious bitterness underneath the assumed act of not giving a damn. "Why? So much love can be used in the wrong way. It's equally damning to love too much...or be loved too much when you don't want to be."

He made his desired hit but only barely. Swearing he looked at his half full glass of beer and saw that it was only half empty. "Go and fetch me another," Harry instructed, holding out the mug.

I was, in effect, forced to hop down from my seat. My hands grabbed the container and I stared at its golden contents in sudden epiphany as we both stood holding it across a green and rectangular pool harbouring round and numbered fish.

"Alcohol has two Os in it, Harry," I commented.

"Ahhhh...yes but I know it is a certain," he said, leaning forward, his eyes knowing and watery. "I can see it, touch it and taste it. Besides there are some voids one willingly chooses to be consumed by for you always know just where you stand with them."

With those words, he let go of his grip on the glass. My own one not having been as tight, it faltered in my hand and I was both glad when I caught it and that it had been half empty, like Harry had thought, so it had not spilled.

"Go little sister. Bacchus and the barkeep will not wait even if that is what he is paid to do."

With a solemn nod I rushed to do my master's bidding.

* * *

His drinking seemed to increase a little bit after our talk. Now I was often sent to keep his beer glass running over but he handled it well enough. Although his speech did become a little slurred when he drank too much.

All of his drinking was bound to have a ramification in regards to his tab. Even if he was still hustling any rube that found their misfortunate way into the bar or his horse would occasionally come in, his consumption inevitably overwhelmed his luck.

I found him one day, after having been unable to visit him for a while, antsy and scowling as he bent over the pool table; the hand on the cue shaking quite badly. Fearing something was wrong I chose to return to my favored stool and not try to improve my game until it was safe. My teacher looked in no condition to teach, after all.

"You know that nickel I gave you a few weeks ago? I want it back," he stated without placing one eye or glance in my direction.

"What?" I asked shocked he was bringing the incident up only as a way to get money from me. "Why do you need it?"

"Brother Ben won't let me charge anymore. Says I need to make a payment. He says five bucks. Not a penny less. I'm five lousy cents short," Harry informed turning to finally look at me as he stood up straight. There was a good natured smile back on his face. Resting the cue on the table, he placed his hands inside his pockets and walked towards me.

Ben was the bartender. I'd been dodging his requests about when Harry would be paying for weeks. I thought the man had finally figured out what I had ages ago: Harry sent me to get him his beer so he could avoid seeing Ben and settling his tab. Judging by the way Harry was trembling, my absence had finally driven him to the bar after a day of sobriety and now Ben had received his chance to issue his ultimatum.

Seeing how badly Harry thought that he needed another glass but seeing also how badly the alcohol had complete control over him, I whispered a gentle, "No."

Now it was the barfly's turn to ask me what for.

"Maybe you should go off of it," I said. "You've been drinking a lot lately."

He swore, raises his head and looked around the ceiling where we were. Taking a hand from out of his pocket he ran it in agitation through his slicked hair. "I don't need a lecture or a mother. I need my nickel."

"No. You need a break," I suggested.

Moved by severe pity from the grimace of pain I saw flash across his sweat covered face, I touched his damp cheek only to have him push my hand away violently.

"GIVE ME THE FUCKING FIVE CENTS, ERIN," Harry yelled at me, "OR I'LL TELL EVERYONE THAT YOU'RE A FAT, FUCKING WHORE WHO'LL LET ANY DAMN MAN FEEL HER TITS FOR A LOUSY NICKEL!"

The words tore a hole right through my heart as did the angry and hate filled look in his brown and bloodshot eyes; eyes aimed solely at me. Shaking I found what he wanted inside of my pocket and with a trembling hand brought it out. It rested on my palm which was held up between the two of us like a peace offering. Harry looked down at it and seemed to regain some of his usual smooth joviality.

"Good," he said meeting my eyes. "That's a good girl. Now I'll give you the rest of my change and you can go buy me another pint."

Anger and pain left me unable to do what he wanted. It flashed in my soul just as his own hatred for me had done about a minute before. I met his eyes, my vision blurred with tears. "GET IT YOURSELF!" I shouted and threw the piece of loose change at him.

It bounced off of his stomach and on to the floor where it rolled off to someplace I couldn't see. I leapt off of the stool and hurried off. An even more damaging wound than the previously inflicted one being the fact that he was busily looking for the nickel behind my swiftly fleeing self instead of stopping me from leaving.


	3. Idea Blooming Skill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and I make up only to find our attraction growing as he takes a more hands on approach to teaching me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just like I don't want to write Keanu Reeves as a person because I don't like assuming what he'd think, say or feel, I also don't enjoy doing that with my sister and mother, God rest her soul. 
> 
> Cherry Mary also presents that problem.
> 
> Sigh.
> 
> Oh well.

I was tempted to throw out the nickel but couldn't find either the strength or desire to actually perform the action itself. I hated Harry but I now knew that I was also in love with him too and became painfully aware that it might be the only thing I would have to remember him by. Even if his words and the memory of him searching the bar room floor for the nickel's counterpart was burning inside of my mind.

Once I took the stupid nickel out from the jewelry box and ran it over my chest again. As I did, I stood in the mirror viewing the journey that it made. I'd taken my bra off and just ran the coin all over my naked skin, rubbing the cold piece of metal over my nipples even; nickel meeting nipple being something Harry had not even done. But it wasn't the same as when he had done it. His touch had been the one to set me off and make my body feel sensations I hadn't been used to.

I spent most of my free time at home; a fact which did not escape my mother or sister's attention.

"Something bad happen at the library?" Tara, my sister, asked one day as I was reading a book in the living room at a time which normally would have seen me absent from the house.

"No," I had replied in full honesty. The bad thing had happened in a bar a far distance from the actual library itself.

"Why are you home so much these days then?" she asked sitting at the end of the couch.

Placing my book down in my lap I replied, "I just feel like staying home."

Tara studied me and then immediately stated something I had known beforehand. "Mom and I are just worried. You seem sad recently. Is everything okay?"

I nodded. I wanted to cry and explain everything but was too ashamed of the lies I had already told to come clean about the whole mess with Harry. "I've...I've just been down about my size," I answered which was part truth as well: Harry calling me fat had made me self conscious about it again, worse than ever before because I loved him.

"You can always start dieting and exercising again," she suggested.

I sighed. Those only went so far with me before it seemed to halt. "I know. Maybe I will...Just give me a few days," I said. "I'll be okay.

And I was.

Two days after my conversation with my sister, as we both sat on the sofa in my living room, Harry turned up on my doorstep to apologize.

Well...he wasn't _exactly_ on the doorstep. He was standing at the end of the walkway to the house looking like he was arguing with himself whether or not he should actually make it to the door. I watched in silence from the large picture window at the front of my house as he warred with the decision, one hand in the pocket of his usual tan trousers while the other one repeatedly went to the back of his head to crumple his otherwise perfectly slicked back hair. Seeing Harry out of his common bar habitat was like seeing a tiger out of the zoo; he seemed just as uncomfortable in a nice family suburb as that giant cat would look strolling down a street in Milwaukee.

Not wanting him to leave without finding the courage himself to let his feet bring him to the front door to actually see me for certain, and wanting to apprehend him before either Tara or mom saw what to them would be a stranger, I ran to the door and rushed outside. His eyes met mine as I stepped out and there was relief visible in their watery orbs. His smile too confessed that he was happy to see me. Although, he remembered our last meeting soon enough and seemed to become somewhat sheepish, returning to fooling around with the back of his head.

"How did you find out where I live?" I asked, shoving my hands into my coat pocket as I stood before him.

"Cherr..I mean Mary told me," he replied.

I glanced over at her house, wondering if she was peering out her own front window at the both of us as we stood their awkwardly beginning to talk. I wouldn't have been surprised if she was.

"C'mon," I said, grabbing hold of his arm and pulling him forward so that we could go and converse somewhere more private without Mary or my family seeing us.

"I think she thinks we're doing _it_ ," Harry commented in a whisper as he leaned closer towards me.

I backed away, smelling the alcohol on his breath. "You didn't ever pay me enough," I stated in an equally low tone. "Remember you only ever gave me a nickel; I only let you feel my breasts for that."

I could sense him tensing before he grabbed me and pulled me over to the side of a man named Teevens' house. He was a cantankerous elderly man that lived only a few houses down from my own. That was how far we had gotten on our trip down the sidewalk and I prayed that the man wouldn't see us trespassing on his property and yell at us or call the cops. There was the danger that he'd tell my mother too.

"You raising that big girl of yours to be a whore?" I could already hear him informing her. "I saw her dipping down the side of my house with some stranger."

Thinking of him assuming I was tramp then too made me start to cry. Tears were falling down my face as Harry held me up against the wall of Teevens' house and when he saw them he hesitated from whatever speech or apology he was about to offer to me.

"How...how can I be a whore when you're the first man that ever touched me like that?" I weeped. "Nobody else only you...and so what if I liked it? I liked it because it was you! But I want you to know that I might be fat but I'm not a whore. You were the first, Harry. I thought you _knew_ that?"

The man instantly took my head in his hands and made me meet his eyes. "I did. I...I just hadn't had a drink in a while. I get stupid when I don't. You understand?"

I shook my head and bit my lip.

Seeing my sadness, Harry held me suddenly and I couldn't help but breath in quickly from it being stolen as his hands wrapped around me tightly. "I'm sorry...so sorry...the place isn't the same without you. Please come back."

I felt fresh tears sting my eyes as a little voice inside of my head warned me that this was all for the con he had planned and nothing more. "It's just 'cause you want to trick your friends!" I spat. "You don't care about me!"

"I do...we can call the whole thing off just come back and sit on the fucking stool and make your funny, snide little comments," he retaliated, hugging me tighter. "I miss you. I am so fucking sorry, Erin."

If I had doubted him for one moment I wouldn't have done what I did next. But it was obvious that his words were true and that he needed some comfort now too; my arms went to his back and I held him too. 

* * *

I was back at the bar the very same day. And Harry returned to teaching me how to play; the con was still on. Only now, since my absence and our embrace outside of my neighbors house, the hustler became a little more hands on in his instructions. Whereas before our lessons had found him avoiding making contact, after our fight and subsequent make up, he was becoming more used to actually _touching_ me. He'd position my large body in the way that he had longed to do previously but been too timid to. Now Harry had no qualms about showing me physically how to hold the cue or to move it.

Once when he was doing this, his body leaning over mine from behind and our hands on the lengthy stick he had turned to me and smiled. "My own one's not so long but it is _wider_ , Erin. That's what they say makes the difference in the end. Do you want to see it?"

I felt goose pimples on my arms appear and I was grateful that my sleeves concealed them. The back of my neck was tingling and I was aware of his body closely pressed against mine. "Not if you don't want me to hit your own balls," I said and went ahead and pushed the cue into the white one without his command. I watched as balls hit balls and I managed to sink the right ones for the first time.

On his way to standing up straight again, his hand lingered on my bum, making me feel excited again from his touch. Then he removed it. "Not bad," he complimented and I tried to hide the heat from my face but knew that he saw it past the smoke anyway.

He started touching me more often. His hands brushing against me here and there and like a bad girl I let him. He was realizing once again that despite my size and his former nickname, for he had stopped calling me his little sister, I was a woman and most definitely _not_ his little sister. I too found myself brushing against him on purpose also. My ass gliding against the front of his trousers as I maneuvered around the pool table. Unbuttoning the first few buttons of my blouse, I showed off to him my breasts as I often leaned over to make a shot.

We were both becoming frustrated by a nearness and sexual awareness we'd only managed to ward off momentarily after the incident with the nickel. One night close to when it was becoming painful for the both of us, Harry found the strength to cross the line. I had just brushed by him again, hearing his quick intake of breath as I did. When I had reached my desired spot, he followed me and I felt him standing behind me as I was once more bent over, with the cue poised to meet the ball. His hand went to the cue again but I felt his other hand drift under my skirt at the back as he bent over me.

"Now these guys...they like to play dirty...let's see how well you do with distractions," he said, his voice as normal and Harry like as ever. 

But then his hand started to trace the crack of my buttocks and I moaned softly.

"See you're caving in already," he warned.

His hand went to the rim of my underwear and pulled them down and I made another soft little whimper. Past my sound, I thought I heard the sound of a zipper from behind me but then I forgot about it as Harry's hand reappeared between my legs, entering and tracing my crevice slowly from the back to the front where it dipped in deeper and found the quickly swelling bud inside.

I moved the cue back to make the shot quickly but Harry's hand clamped down on the cue preventing me as he started to play with my clit.

I cried out louder then, his simple touch of that part of me making me feel wonderful pressure in my most personal area. I knew I should have told him to stop but I didn't want to. This was what girls like Cherry Mary had experienced multiple times and I just longed for this once...to have Harry touch me there at least once where I had fantasized he would.

Harry's arm was between my legs so that I was straddling it and could feel my tender flesh down below touching the own soft flesh of his inner arm, the sleeve of his white shirt having been rolled up. It felt wonderful and I moaned again as he continued to attend to my clitoris, drawing circles around it with his fingertip and then rubbing it between the same finger and his thumb. Another gasp came out as I unexpectedly felt something hard and large press into my thigh.

"You feel that?" he whispered sensuously into my ear as the hot piece of flesh caressed my own flesh. "That, Erin...that's what you awakened with all that careless brushing of yours. Best to let sleeping dragons lie. Feels big, doesn't it. Do you want that inside of you when you aren't ready for it?"

I moaned out louder, feeling very much that I _did_ want it inside of me right there and then. As he was teasing my clit I felt something deeper inside starting to clench. It felt like it was almost trying to suck on something that was miserably absent and I wanted that part of Harry deep inside of me then to fulfill that woeful void and ache.

We both heard the sound of someone approaching, and I bit my bottom lip as Harry still leant over me but tried to assume an air of normalcy.

"What's going on back here?" Ben the bartender asked gruffly, his six foot four frame a shock to see emerging through the dimness and cigarette induced fog.

"I'm just teaching my little friend here how to shoot a decent game," Harry explained casually as I felt him still playing with me, a fact hidden by the pool table. "Anything wrong with that?"

I bit my lip more fiercely as I felt still in the throes of ecstasy, Harry's hand still intent on pleasing me as his insistent penis was still hard as a rock and rubbing against my inner thigh. It felt wet now also, painting my flesh with some kind of bodily fluid. Obviously, the barfly was getting a big rise out of fornicating in the back of the bar under his arch nemesis' nose. 

But Ben wasn't entirely convinced it seemed. He turned to me for confirmation. "That right Erin?" 

"Yes," I replied, summoning all the strength I had to speak despite the bliss overtaking me.

The intimidating drink pouring giant scowled at us both, waved us away angrily and swearing returned to his work behind the bar.

After he had gone, Harry's hand dropped the cue and went to my mouth, just in time to muffle my loud cry.

"It's okay Erin," Harry whispered huskily and gently. "He won't be back but still..."

I was suffering in pleasure, building towards something I didn't understand.

"Ride my arm," the barfly instructed.

I did as he instructed, moving my body along the length beneath me, liking the friction and hearing Harry moan now too as he started to rub himself more enthusiastically against my thigh. The feeling of needing to pee suddenly took hold of me and I struggled in embarrassment, fearing I'd do it all over the man's arm. But I didn't; instead the area hidden by my folds started a violent series of spasms. Harry's hand caught my scream and I felt my thigh become very wet as his penis shot off on to my upper leg.

We stayed bent over the pool table, trying to catch our breaths for a while. Then Harry tenderly kissed my cheek, stroked my thigh where he had just come and left me. As I heard him redoing the zipper to his trousers, I felt his remaining offering dribbling down my leg.

He walked to the side of the table and I could see that I had made his arm quite wet after all. Seeing it himself, he rolled down the sleeve hastily. I could see the fabric clinging to moist skin underneath it.

"There's another lesson for you," he told me, trying to steady his voice. "Don't play games you may not be ready to. Especially when we've got a more important one to focus on. There's no time for sex right now little sister."

So I was back to being his little sister, his cock spent and its cash almost down to my striped sock.

While he bent over and took the shot I had been intending to, I wanted to say to him that he had been equally playing it with me; both with his hands which had always found me and his eyes that were always searching my own eyes and body. But now he wouldn't look at me; he was avoiding it altogether. The balls on the field of green alone held his attention. But I thought I saw guilt and self hatred in his eyes as surely as the mixture of my cream and his come that his hand was leaving to glisten on the pool cue.

* * *

Despite my teacher's warning that we were no longer to mix sex with our lessons, we did end up sleeping together shortly thereafter.

One night, I went to the bar only to find Harry more drunk and belligerent than I had ever seen him before. He was cursing and hurling insults at anybody that got close to him. Ben had warned me before I went to the back but I could pretty well hear the sound of my friend's incoherent tirade before I had even set foot in the place.

"You get him out of here, Erin, or I won't let him come back," was the ultimatum I received.

"Why didn't you do it yourself?" I asked.

The brute looked somewhat ashamed. "He threw his mug at me. Nearly got me too."

"Do you know where he lives?" I inquired desperately but the bartender only shrugged, leaving me to rush to the nearest phone and contact Mary to ask of her the same question.

"Jeez...I don't know," she replied. "I never _went_ with him."

"Great," I mumbled, knowing I couldn't very well drag him to my home. My mom would never let a man stay in our house that she was unfamiliar with. Heck, she wouldn't even let a guy that she was familiar with for that matter.

"Oh wait!" she suddenly exclaimed. "Neal mentioned it once. A crummy little dump at the end of Murray I think."

I thanked God for her returning memory and then I thanked Mary also. "I'm gonna tell my mom I'm staying at your place tonight incase I don't make it home in time," I informed her. "Any way you can back it up if she calls?"

"Sure," the girl replied jovially. "You helped me out once. It's the least I can do."

"Thanks," I said sincerely.

After I had hung up the phone, I went to see the man whom had become my friend and love because of that very same favor I had done for Mary in the first place. He was sitting in the corner mumbling and shouting but his expression softened when he saw me.

"Hiiii litttle sisterrr..." he slurred his greeting.

"Hi Harry," I said gently. "We got to get you home now."

"Whyyy?" he asked, looking on the verge of becoming angry again.

"Bar's closing," I lied.

"Oh. Is it that late already?" he asked swallowing the untruth as easily as the many beers which had caused his severely inebriated state.

"Yeah," I said, going to his side to help him to his feet. "Come on. I'll take you home."

I was shocked when the man stood easily, obviously intent on letting me. When he stumbled, I was there to catch him and we left the bar together, going into the dark night waiting for us outside.

* * *

Harry's neighbors told me which apartment was his. I lied to them, telling them that I was his sister. They held no suspicion, knowing the man so little that it might as well have been the truth to them. Luckily Harry lived on the ground floor; having to walk a flight of stairs after having had to carry half of his weight all the way to the building had drained me badly already. 

His apartment was suprisingly tidy. But then again he was hardly ever there, preferring to spend his time at the many bars and dives in the city. Only a few bottles and some magazines and books littered here and their betrayed that anybody lived there. I saw a magazine opened to a page with an article written by his friend Neal Cassady and wondered if this was somehow the reason for his bad mood.

Leading him to his bedroom, Harry practically fell on to the bed and I started to go. A hand shot out and I turned to look at the man looking up at me, completely sloshed and vulnerable.

"Don't gggoooo," he pleaded.

"I can't stay," I returned.

"No," he said sadly, dropping his hand from my wrist. "Nobody ever does."

That was all he needed to say.

I crawled into bed with him, and as he nuzzled up next to me, his breath smelled as strongly of alcohol as the bottles did that were strewn across his apartment, I had no doubt. "I loooove you," he muttered. "You knnooow that, don't you?" he asked, his words hitting the side of my neck.

I held him tightly. "Yes," I whispered and he embraced me as if he were drowning.

Which he had been for years before I had ever met him.

We fell asleep like that: a man struggling to stay afloat and the woman whom he had made into a preserver of the life he was not really sure he wanted to save anymore anyway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really am happy with this entry to the series even though practically nobody is reading it. :/


	4. Skill Blooming Victory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and I finally play Bill and Fred in a game of pool...

I was awake before Harry was. I stared at his sleeping face for a while, softly brushed away the hair from his forehead and touched his cheek. He was still holding me tightly, as if even in his sleep he was afraid that I would leave him. When he finally did awake, I watched as his face went through the first stages of hungover awareness: confusion, realization of where he was, acceptance of who he was and then back to confusion again as he realized who was lying next to him and who he was holding on to.

"Erin?"

"Hello Harry," I greeted lowly.

He studied my face for a moment and I felt him move his hands on my back getting acquainted with the feel of me more. "Did we?" he asked.

I sighed, rolled my eyes and looked at him kindly. "No. If we had I would certainly want you to remember that we had, at least."

He leaned in close, his lips hovering over mine. "Do you _want_ to?"

I realized then what it was that I had been feeling against me for the last few minutes and that Harry was never one to miss out on an opportunity or let a good case of morning wood go to waste. 

But my beaver wasn't biting.

"I'd better go," I said breaking out of his hold with a little struggle and climbing out of bed.

Going to the end of the bed, I looked at my friend as he tried to focus on me; the light meeting his eyes was obviously causing them pain and he was squinting. "I've got to get to school," I informed him. "I just hope Mary covered for me well enough with my Mom and sister. I'm not the sleepover type of girl."

Harry grinned in affable lasciviousness. "But you changed your stance for me? I'm honored. Now get back here for some phys-ed."

I rolled my eyes again and went to sit on the edge of the bed but not in the way he had hoped. "Do me a favor," I requested. "The night of the bet, make sure that it's on a Friday or Saturday night."

He nodded, peering up at me with brown bloodshot eyes. I started to stroke his black hair, feeling as if he were a puppy dog or a child, some helpless creature that needed looking after. "Why do you drink so much, Harry?" I asked.

His face went from innocence laced lightly with human weakness to stony resistance. "You'd better get going, little sister, or you'll be late for class," he stated bitterly and then turned away and out of my touch.

My hand stayed in the air for a moment, no longer with a head to stroke, and I rose from the bed and headed for the door. Along the way, I closed the magazine with the article by Neal Cassady so Harry wouldn't need to see it and be reminded of the absent friend who had seemed to have forgotten him.

* * *

I wasn't late for class and changed into the extra uniform I kept in my locker in the girls washroom. But I could barely concentrate while I was there. My thoughts were too busy on if I'd get a lecture from Tara and my mother because Mary hadn't been convincing enough in her tale. If I was grounded I'd likely not be able to see Harry again with such ease. Being caught in a lie as big as staying over at a neighbor's house, while I was actually sleeping in the bed of a drunken man they had never met, would put a serious dent on the trust my family held in me.

Thinking of my family and how much I loved them and they loved me in return, I couldn't help but wonder if Harry's troubles hadn't all started because his household hadn't had that same love and support. His father left early and, from what he'd said, his mother practically gave herself to any guy available so she wouldn't have to wake up alone. I hated her a little for not focusing her attention and love on her son instead. Not in a smothering or creepy sort of way but in a way that showed him that he mattered more to her than a loneliness she should not have been feeling because she had a sweet son who needed her more than any stranger could.

Harry's red veined eyes, looking at me first with need and then coldness, haunted me all day and when I finally walked through my front door, it was with the hope that everything would be okay so I could rush to the bar and make sure everything was okay between the barfly and myself.

"Why'd you stay over at Mary's all night?" seemed to be the unanimous question Mom and Tara both had but they didn't seem to doubt it at all.

My next greatest worry was that they'd think I was doing something more than just sleeping over at the girl's house; so in horror I tried to correct this assumption as best I could.

"Mary wanted me to," I quickly said. "She's been having trouble with her mom again. She spent all night on the phone with her latest boyfriend. I guess, Mary thought if it looked like she was having a sleepover her mom wouldn't listen in again like with that Cassady guy."

Mom shook her head. "I'm glad I have a _sensible_ daughter," she stated. "One who steers clear of that gang of beatniks and that sort of man."

"Yeah," I said guiltily, thinking of Harry again, who was _exactly_ that sort of man my mother feared. "I need to change. Then I guess I'll head off to the library."

"Well don't let Mary rope you into staying with her again all night," my mother warned. "I don't like her involving you in her lies."

Another flash of shame was suffered before I kissed her on the cheek. "I won't mom."

Heading to my bedroom, I prayed to God that Harry would stay sober that night. Or as sober as he ever was, at least.

* * *

Harry was back at the bar when I arrived there but he wasn't cursing or yelling like the night before. Apparently he bounced back more like a rubber ball than the heavy ones he was use to hitting with his cue. He seemed relatively sober but he would hardly look at me when I entered and paid his full attention to his temple made of green felt instead. I don't know why but he looked lonely and vulnerable to me again. As he stood up to rub the chalk into his cue, I held him from behind and kissed the white shirt on his back.

"I love you," I told him and I meant it like a woman and a mother would at the same time.

Harry stopped in his motion to pat my hand and hold it for a bit. The skin of his own hand felt cold and slightly clammy and I held him even tighter.

We let go around the same time and I returned to the stool in expectation of the instruction which awaited me.

* * *

The game was set for next Saturday. Harry said I wasn't great but would do. Neither Fred nor Bill were geniuses at the game either and he would be there to balance it in our favor.

"Are you sure I'm ready?" I asked, looking skeptical even though I had just sunk the desired ball.

"Why of course," he reassured. "But since I did you a favor in setting the game up on a Saturday night, you do me one in return and wear that school uniform of yours the night it all goes down."

"On the weekend?" I asked, raising my brows. "They won't think that's weird?"

"Yes," Harry said, leaning on the stick and eyeing me from top to bottom. "It will make them fall into our snare all the quicker if they look at you and think youth and inexperience. Besides...You've got a nice ass, little sister. It will be a benefit to us if their minds get distracted by it."

I was disgruntled then. The only pair of eyes I wanted looking at me there belonged to Harry himself. I wanted him to be protective and jealous and not just put me on display in order to win a game.

I frowned at him in disapproval. "I wouldn't mind if it was _you_ , Harry. But I don't like the thought of being ogled by two virtual strangers."

The hustler laughed. "Who said I won't be admiring the view either and not just teasing them both with what I got but they can't touch?"

I sauntered up to him, my own cue still in my hand. I placed it on the ground and studied him in coyful defiance. "And who said I'd _let_ you touch me?"

In his own act of defiance, Harry dropped his cue and placed his hands around me, cupping each of the cheeks of my ass and making me jolt a little closer towards him. "Oh I think you'd let me," he stated. "I think you'll let me do whatever I want with you because you think that you love me."

I shook my head. "I _know_ that I love you," I whispered with conviction.

Harry peered down at me and he seemed suddenly very unsure and different from his usual cocky self. "And maybe," he said. "Just _maybe_ I love you too, little sister. But that won't change one damn little thing. Because not one beating from any single heart or the words I love you ever made a single thing in this whole damn world change and you've still got the rest of your life ahead of you while mine has damn well passed me by."

His hands left my buttocks. Before he grabbed the cue quickly again and bent over the table, he kissed me tenderly on the forehead. Listening to the sound of ball hitting ball, I was too floored by the fact that he had just essentially confessed that he loved me to move. Even my breath was hesitant to come out and wreck the moment. It seemed so important from a man whom had often professed his disbelief in the emotion. And yet he carried on with his game as if it didn't really mean anything more than the greetings that we would exchange upon seeing each other.

But it had meant more than the world to me.

And always would.

* * *

Saturday night I headed out in a sweater and skirt saying I was going out for a double bill at the local theater; there was a Bogie and Bacall showing of The Big Sleep and Key Largo. I liked hardboiled films and detectives just as I admired the chemistry between the husband and wife actors. Knowing I could easily tell them about the films, having seen them before, it seemed like a safe enough bet.

Harry was waiting outside of the bar and looked at me in disappointment as I approached him.

"That _isn't_ your school uniform," he chastised.

"It's in here," I said, holding up a bag. "I'll get changed in the washroom."

"No you won't," Harry stated, pushing me into the alleyway. "Bill and Fred have already made their arrival. You, little sister, will dress thine self out here."

At the back of the building, I started to change into the uniform while my friend kept watch. I felt his eyes often looking over his shoulder to keep watch on me too. A guard was needed to protect me from him also it seemed but I didn't mind; Harry stealing glances at me made me hot deep between my legs and I took longer than I should have, enjoying the feeling of teasing us both with an aroused fat girl's peepshow.

"Dammit aren't you done yet?" Harry asked, his voice rough and horny as he caught me slowly buttoning my blouse, the same one he had unbuttoned once before caressing me with a nickel.

"Now I am," I replied, hurrying with the final button.

"Good! C'mon let's go," he said, grabbing my hand and yanking me down the alley.

The two men were talking and laughing at the back of the bar by the pool table. Upon seeing me, I saw them whisper something to each other and knew it was derisive and at the expense of my weight. Right then any feeling of guilt I had suffered about duping them vanished.

"William and Frederick this is Erin," Harry handled the introductions. "Erin these are Freddy and Billy. The tall one with the hair the color of a carrot respectively Bill. The blond, who's closer to the ground, is old Fred."

"Hi there," Fred said. "Harry says you think you can play pool."

"Yes," I nodded.

"Eight Ball your game?" Bill stated. "Is that a good enough place to test yourself? $100 says you're good enough to beat Fred and myself?"

I looked at Harry, at my side, and he winked at me with his left eye, the one only visible to myself. "Okay," I agreed. 

My teacher looked well pleased and he walked over to grab our cues, his hand patting my butt a few times and caressing it on his way.

The game started and Bill and Fred, who had each brought their own cues, looked pretty confident as I failed pretty badly in its beginning. I wish I could say it was intentional just like Harry wanted me to do, but my nerves were getting the best of me; as were some of the whispers I heard pass between Harry and mine's opponents. They liked my ass bent over the table, as my partner had suspected, and made a few remarks. But these were laced in between some pretty mean barbs about my weight.

When I didn't succeed in making one particularly easy shot they told Harry that he shouldn't have picked a team mate whose belly got in between her and the game table. Tears formed in my eyes at this and seeing them Harry shouted at his friends to give me a break; that I was only a kid. As I leaned over the pool table, trying not to break into full tears, my friend came up behind me and dipped his hand between my legs and stroked the crotch of my panties.

"Ride my arm," he whispered as he placed that under there too and let me enjoy the feel of it beneath me for a moment.

"Hey what are you two doing?" Fred asked in suspicion.

"Private joke," Harry said, straightening up and making the next shot and saving us both from my last disastrous one.

Watching the man be so confident and turn to look at me from over his shoulder, offering me a sweet and comforting smile and wink, I felt that same confidence grow inside of my own soul.

The next time I hit that cue ball it went right where I said and where we needed it to. I repeated it the next two times as well and by then Fred and Bill were starting to pick up on the fact that it wasn't just luck but genuine _skill_.

"Hey what's going on?" Bill asked in outrage. "Does she know how to actually play?"

Harry laughed and grinned up at his friend as he went to make his move and I rested my left arm on his back and butt while he was leaning over.

"How on Earth could I actually do _that_?" I asked with feigned shock and innocence. "A chick playing, _and_ _one that size_ , would be crazy, _brother!_ "

Hearing his own words and misconception thrown back at him, Bill began to fume and I looked at Harry as he looked at me and we smiled in the knowledge that victory and one hundred dollars was already ours.

* * *

The game went on for a while but not much longer. Frederick and William would not admit defeat that easily and they struggled to pull out a miracle. But God wasn't listening to them that day. Or maybe He was simply choosing to instruct them that pride, prejudice, wealth and gullibility made very poor bedfellows. At the end of the game they had discovered fat girls could play pool, we had discovered that our opponents made very poor losers and one hundred dollars in several varying combinations were placed into Harry's happily waiting hands.

"I'll trust you boys that it's all here," the barfly stated.

"More than we ever should have _trusted_ you!" Fred stated petulantly.

"Now brothers!" Harry exclaimed. "You should _always_ trust never placing your rectangles of green on the table bearing the same shade and shape! She's a cruel mistress and you know those always eat cash for breakfast, lunch and supper. Go and find yourselves wives of true blue that only ask for your love and devotion."

"Go and fuck yourself!" Bill snapped storming out of the bar. "And fuck your fat girl too."

Fred followed after him.

I liked winning over the two men but the last insult hurt and I faced away from the cruel fools as they left the bar, holding myself and rubbing the bared flesh of my arm, the sleeve of my blouse having been rolled up near the start of the game.

Harry walked quickly towards me and gently brought a hand to my shoulder; the hand still holding the winnings, in return, brushed its knuckles against my chin.

"Funny," I said. "Fat is a word I'll always hate hearing...I...I never get used to it."

"He's an ass with a mouth," the hustler comforted. "But he did have a good idea."

"What's that?" I asked.

The man brought his face closer to mine and the feeling that coursed through my thick frame was electric, my heart stopping for a long second, as our eyes intensely locked. "I think I _will_ fuck you," Harry whispered before kissing me passionately on the lips.

My heart restarted with an almost painful jolt as our lips hungrily consumed each other and the man gently laid me down on the pool table. Breaking away, Harry stood peering down at me as I breathed deeply, my chest noticeably rising and falling, in lustful and loving admiration.

"It was never about _this_ ," he said triumphantly as he threw the money in his hand into the air. It fell like paper snow down around us both, landing here and there without either of us caring. Running his hand over my plump body, Harry joyfully declared, "This...this was what I was _always_ after!" 

Slowly, Harry started to unbutton the very blouse he had spied me getting into in the alleyway outside, savoring the moment and the prize finally won...


	5. Victory Blooming Defeat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry claims my virginity on the bar's pool table.

"I shouldn't let him do this," I thought as Harry unbuttoned each button on my blouse. "I should get up or tell him no. Harry would listen. He would understand. He would let me go."

And I knew completely that it was true. Harry loved me enough to stop making love to me if I chose to give him a sign that I didn't want to. Only I didn't want him to stop. I wanted him to continue and to claim me right there on the same pool table which had just witnessed our victory.

His fingers finished with their mission, Harry gently peeled away the corners of each side of my blouse until I was lying before him in nothing more than my bra. I could feel my nipples tingling from the hungry stare that was on Harry's face as he studied my clothed breasts. I wondered how many times the man had thought about this moment and remembered his actions with the nickel; just as I had often relived that specific moment in my own mind and conjured imaginations where we had not been interrupted and it had gone ever further.

Now was our time to do what we had both probably fantasized about endless times. The game was over and the barfly was finally allowing himself to celebrate by giving in to our mutual yearnings.

Harry brought a hand to my stomach and traced around my navel before he lifted up my bra, exposing my breasts. I wasn't the most proud of them despite that their size was similar to Marilyn Monroe's and that the skin on them was soft, smooth and pale like hers. Yet my lover did not seem to mind. He traced around each nipple with his index finger just as he had done with my belly button. Then he touched the actual teat itself and I moaned and arched my back from his touch; feeling the pink buds of flesh trying to rise as the one hidden inside of my body did the same.

"Ohhh pretty girl," Harry cooed as he lowered his head to my left breast and began to suck on the nipple, his right hand going to the other breast to toy with it simultaneously.

"Harry..."

He reversed the action of his mouth and hands, clasping his lips around my right nipple while his hand went to work on the left. Harry's own not exactly flat stomach was pressed against my slightly separated thighs and I liked the feel of his tummy rubbing against my groin which felt like it was rapidly being consumed in a fire. My hands went to Harry's back and his head while he became very well acquainted with my breasts. The more he did the more the heat between my legs intensified until I felt them parting even more from my arousal and heard a sigh escaping from my lips.

Feeling the movement and hearing the sound, Harry stopped and looked at me and I admired the cobweb of saliva from his lips to my nip. It remained while he asked, "What be the welcome of a pretty pair of thighs, without the invitation of a virgin's excited sigh?"

I watched as the cobweb of spit broke while Harry raised himself off from me. The hustler stood by my legs and pushed them suprisingly back together. The hands I'd witnessed play so many games of pool then dipped under my skirt and I felt them grab my underwear and slowly slide it off of my legs. When he had taken the admittedly and regrettably unsexy article of clothing clean off, Harry smiled at me and held them up in triumph.

"Pair of panties in the bottom left corner pocket," he announced before shoving them in the hole.

Strong hands soon thereafter cupped each knee and delighted in spreading my legs apart again, even wider than they had previously been. I felt myself exposed beneath my school uniform's skirt, my clitoris feeling like it was standing straight up and peeking past the safety of its curtains of skin in the depths of its excitation. I gasped feeling wetness escape from my opening and trickle out; I only hoped it landed on my skirt and not the pool table itself.

Giving my breasts a few more hungry fondles, Harry smiled at me and winked before his head disappeared underneath my skirt entirely.

"Harry what are you..."

I cried out as I felt Harry's soft tongue enter my slit and lick my swollen bud.

"Oh no you shou-shouldn't!" I started to say but Harry only repeated the same motion as before, taking the whole bud in his mouth and exploring it with his tongue.

"Unhhhhannnhhh," I moaned and then brought my fist to my mouth fearing that if I made too much noise Ben would come back there once more and find me lying almost naked on his pool table while Harry was down on me.

It was so difficult to stay quiet though as Harry's tongue continued to caress me, once even dipping into my vagina itself and licking up the fluid seeping out. All the while I was being manipulated out of my usually rational and pragmatic mind, I could see the man's head bobbing underneath my skirt in his enthusiastic endeavor until the pressure grew to that now known point of climax and I felt myself spasming. After the last twitch Harry peaked his cocky head up from out of my skirt and gave me one of his all knowing smiles .

Grasping my thighs he ran his hands up them until they came to rest on my hips. "Are you still with me?" he asked.

"Ye-yes," I managed to say, taking the fist from out of my mouth and seeing the deep teeth marks I had made when I had bitten down during my body's frantic orchestrations.

"Good," Harry said, gliding his palms down to my buttocks and then sliding to the underside of the thighs again. "Because I still have something I want to give you..."

Taking his hands from off my thighs, Harry began to unbuckle his belt all the while as his watery eyes stayed on mine. Even though I had just come, I felt arousal's returning pressure again while the man looked down at me and unzipped the fly of his trousers, pulling them down. My breath was shallow as I studied his white boxers and the bulge contained inside. It looked large and I was suddenly a little frightened when Harry suddenly lowered his boxers also to reveal his member, standing at full height and looking red and...angry.

Yes.

Angry was the word. It also looked horribly raw and sore and I felt even more terrified of it and a little worried for Harry.

"Does that hurt?" I asked, feeling my arousal deepening in spite of my fear. It was like the space between my legs knew that what Harry had was designed to finally make it whole for the first time in its existence and was clenching every now and then as if wanting to kiss the darn thing.

"A little now but you have the solution to that problem right here, Erin."

His hand went under my skirt once more and his fingers found my opening. I threw my head back and moved my hips into his touch.

Raising my head again, I noted a bit of liquid at the swollen tip of Harry's penis. "Looks so sore," I commented in sympathy and want.

"You gonna heal me, baby girl?" Harry asked, moving closer and pressing that same glistening part against my crotch.

I shuddered as I felt it and its wetness against my already drenched entrance. I wanted him inside of me so badly then, even if the cock looked big and scary, like a sea serpent that lived in the deepest darkest waters.

"Yes," I gave my vow in a low voice so that Ben wouldn't hear me.

Apparently Harry had trouble hearing me also and leaned over me, his erection still waiting to claim me for the first time. "Are you sure, Erin?" he whispered into my ear.

I nodded, unaware that I had started to cry until Harry brought his hand to my face and kissed away the tears that were falling from my eyes.

"I won't hurt you," he promised. "I promise, I could never do that."

Harry kissed my cheek and I took his hand and kissed the fingers on it.

His lips moved from my cheek to my lips as my lips moved from his fingertips to his lips too. Shortly after our mouths locked, Harry pushed his penis into me and my cry of pain entered his mouth, smothered by his searching tongue. I whimpered then from the sensation of both my torn lower flesh and his swollen and hard length spreading the place that had so desperately wanted its arrival but now felt that it was possibly too much to take in without ensuing agony.

"Relax," Harry said into my ear again. "Just relax and...unhhh..."

I had made the mistake of moving which obviously had caused the man pleasure while it had only caused me pain; I saw it written in his eyes and from the sound of his breath. This realization of giving to Harry a moment of overpowering bliss caused me to feel aroused again past my discomfort.

"Harry..." I moaned into his ear and bravely attempted to move my hips again.

Oh there was the pain again but a flash of wonderful pleasure as well and I breathed in quickly from the first glimpse of the ecstasy the organ buried deep within me could bring. Harry caught sight of it on my features and started to thrust, slow and sensuously without .

"Ooohhhh," I said, experiencing prolonged moments of that momentary bliss. 

Harry became bolder in his movements, knowing I was finding the joy that this act could bring and that he was my instructor in this just as he had been in the game he loved. His lips trailed down my throat and went to my chest to lick and suckle my erect teats while he occassionally kissed the bounteous mounds of flesh that surrounded them. 

I was biting on my hand again as he pushed faster and faster inside of me, my legs wrapping around his ass.

Harry bit my nipple and while I would have thought this would have hurt, it only sent another wave of intense pleasure. I let go of my fist to moan lowly and then saw my lover place his tongue between my breasts and run it up to the base of my neck.

My vagina started to prepare for that series of spasms but I realized something as Harry found my lips again and started to kiss me passionately, an act I reciprocated with the whole of my heart: what felt better than the act which was meant to represent the pinnacle of sex, for me, was the fact that Harry was inside of me and that I was making him feel good.

"I love you," I stated in between an onslaught of the man's kisses as I came. "I love you so much, Harry."

I felt Harry's cock start to convulse also as he unleashed his torrent into the warm, safe place between my legs. 

Afterwards, we just lay on the pool table, my arms around the spent man as he breathed heavily from carnal exertion.

"I love you too," Harry said gently; at last able to speak. At first, I was only able to see the warm look of love contained in his eyes. But the longer I looked into them the more I realized that there was the knowledge of a certain defeat there as well. Peering into those sorrowful eyes, I couldn't tell if the water that the eyes were now bathed in was due to Harry's alcoholism or if he was crying. Maybe it was both the same thing...

Maybe he had been weeping this whole time I had known him and I had never been able to tell until he had been so close as to be inside of me. 

Harry kissed me one last time before pulling out and his exit hurt almost as much as his entrance, hinting that the words that he would never hurt me had probably all been a lie. Rising to his feet, he quickly pulled up his briefs and trousers and zipped them, buckling his belt. I lay there feeling his seed spilling out of me like the tears which were falling from my eyes. Some remained inwardly, however, in imitation of what Harry could not find the strength to cry.

He looked down at me lying there with my breasts and belly exposed and my legs still parted, my skirt hitched up. I feared he'd tell me to make myself decent and that would have been too much for me to take but then he pulled my bra down himself, kissed my round stomach and buttoned my blouse tenderly. After pulling my skirt down, he fished my underwear out of the pool table's pocket. I was rising to a sitting position when he pushed them towards me.

"Here," he said in something akin to shame and guilt and atonement.

I took them shakily.

I wrapped my arms around his chest as he wrapped his own around mine.

Kissing my forehead, the man I loved began to tell me that he loved me and apologize immediately afterwards over and over again.

"I love you...I'm sorry...I love you...I'm sorry..."

Until I wasn't sure if he was trying to tell me he was sorry for what we had just done or apologize for being in love with me. 

As if his love was a loss and not a victory.


	6. Defeat Blooming Acceptance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry worries that I'm pregnant after our having made love on the pool table and I eventually discover the reason for his fear and look of defeat.

After Harry had taken my virginity, a new awkwardness seemed to crowd around us in the otherwise empty backroom of the bar. He could hardly look at me even though I often stared at him trying to somehow give him the courage to meet my eyes. Suddenly he busied himself with collecting the winnings from Fred and Bill which he had previously made fall like paper snow which he hadn't given a damn about. His hands were shaking as he squatted on the floor, retrieving the bills and placing them in a thin stack in the grip of one hand. I squatted down in front of him to help even though possessing a big tummy made the position as awkward and uncomfortable as the atmosphere around us. I handed Harry a few Alexander Hamiltons and still he wouldn't raise his eyes to meet mine when he took them. When I'd handed him the final one, I softly placed my pudgy hand over his, trying to let him know that I loved him.

"Harry, I wanted that as much as you did," I whispered gently.

He looked at me briefly, which was an improvement I guessed, and then quickly took some bills out of his stack to hand to me. "Here," he said. "Incase...you _know_."

I knew. It struck me as odd that there was Harry giving me money for the same reason that Mary had tricked me into meeting with him in the first place. It would be ironic if I ended up pregnant and running off to some back alley Doctor to take care of it but I would never even consider that as an option. It would be better to face the shame and disappoint my mom and sister than have to face the guilt of that one decision and action for the rest of my life. And the chance that after a while I could reason away the guilt or that it would fade away...well that was too horrible to even be willing to contemplate or risk happening.

I pushed the money back at Harry. "I'd never do that."

"Well you better little sister," the man said in quiet terror. "Because I'm not going to be a father to any child. I can't. "

I believed then that he meant he'd rather his bar cells be made of gray iron than white picket wood. His lips and eyes which were usually bleary and genial were like a frightened animal whose ankle was being kissed by a mouth with steel sharp teeth. Harry grabbed my hand and slapped the money into it. Pain flared from the sting of the force of his contact and I saw the man flinch as he realized the pain he had caused. He didn't try to comfort me though. Instead he rose to his feet and stated, "I need a drink."

Watching him head to the bar, I knew exactly what he intended to spend the rest of his winnings on. Water made mainly of salt fell from my eyes as I stood and ran for the door, hearing Harry placing his order behind my back and still feeling where he had been deep inside of me only moments before as he'd taken me on the pool table.

On my way back home, I stopped in at the Saint Ignatius Loyola to drop the money Harry had given me into the donation box. I wasn't about to use it for what Harry wanted me to and didn't even like looking at it anymore thinking of my friend's harsh words and desperate gaze. I much preferred my little insignificant nickel kept at home in my jewelry box. I looked at the statues of the saints as I left. They all looked either disapproving or sad, I thought. But the stained glass windows were beautiful even in the darkness and I liked the infant Jesus depicted on one of them. 

I seriously doubted my first time having sex would result in a baby but if it did I knew that baby's father wouldn't be God; he was only a man, self destructive enough to be a Midas who turned money into alcohol. But I'd still love the infant he had made and cherish it just as much as I did my Savior.

I warranted a few stray stares from people praying in the aisles as I left but little else.

* * *

I began waiting to feel those first few signs that my period was coming. The distant, dull pangs inside, the sore, tender breasts and the upswing in my anxiety. This last one was hard to tell those days though. I was on edge enough as it was, trying to hide from my family that I'd finally been with a man in that way. I wasn't ashamed of Harry. He was a drunk and a con man; somebody that held little faith or respect in anything and who only wanted to float through life on a stream made out of the beer sold in this bar or that. But I knew that my mom and sister would try to separate me from the man that I loved and that caused me fear.

Not that Harry wasn't trying to do that very same thing himself.

Whenever I went to visit him, Harry was far more detatched than before. Ever since we had made love, it was almost like he was afraid that I was the one whom had actually entered him and had subsequently a shield up to keep me out and far away. Now I was a sister and not a little sister or even Erin. He'd play his game of pool and barely look or acknowledge me. 

Ben seemed sympathetic which was odd coming from the gruff, giant that he normally was. He'd smile at me sadly when I walked through the entrance making me worried about what Harry did while I was away or what the two men talked about in my absence.

I feared that Harry was back to going with other girls, wild ones like Mary, and asked the barkeep about it one day when I went to fetch Harry his drink, one of the sole roles I had been relegated to in his life.

"No," Ben said. "He just seems to be drinking more...and I don't like how he doesn't seem to talk about you anymore. I thought..."

"You thought what?" I asked softly, seeing for the first time that Ben cared for Harry despite their antagonistic relationship.

"I thought you might be the one to save him," the bartender confessed.

"Oh Ben," I said and lightly touched his cheek.

"I thought he wanted to live, maybe. But sometimes you find out that men you think are trying to stay above water are only struggling because they don't understand why the water isn't pulling them down quick enough and just being done with it all."

* * *

"You get it yet?" Harry asked before making a shot one day, obviously a little more drunk than usual.

"Not yet," I said. "But I'm usually late. It's a weight thing."

"Fat girls aren't supposed to get pregnant," the hustler said before striking the ball as hard as he had done with his words in regards to me.

I swallowed back tears but it hardly mattered. His focus was on the balls and not me.

"You have the money I gave you?" he asked, frustrated that his shot had gone all wrong.

"No. I gave it away," I confessed.

The barfly swore angrily and finally looked at me. "What, you wanna be ostracized? You want to be stuck with a brat?"

"Yes."

He snickered and bent down to take another shot. "Well as I said, don't expect me to be there to play house if you keep it."

I loved Harry but I wasn't going to let him bully me into doing something I didn't want to. Not when it was this serious. "We'll just drop by to say hi then," I informed him.

"Don't expect me to answer the door, sister," he stated coldly.

"But you let me still come and watch you play now," I countered.

His shoulders tensed up and I knew I had him. "It's a free bar."

"You could easily go to another."

Harry sighed and whacked his cue against the table which was his only other master besides his alcoholism. He turned around and glared at me. "Why do you want to bring a kid into this world, huh? With a father as rotten as me? Kill it before it suffers."

"Everyone suffers. But it's better to die than to never be born at all, Harry. If it wants to end it all later well than that's its choice but I won't kill it myself."

He laughed bitterly. "You support suicide?"

"I'm not Catholic," I said. "I believe God loves and forgives more than that and understands more than we give Him credit for. Besides don't be a hypocrite, Harry: you've been killing yourself for years, haven't you?"

We glared at one another through cigarette smoke and dust which danced in the last rays of sun streaming in through the window: two angry and defiant people whom perhaps should have remained strangers but now cared too much for each other to bear to be apart.

Then Harry grabbed his mug of beer and downed it all in only two swallows. Afterwards he slammed it on to the wooden frame of the pool table and wiped the few last traces of the liquid from the lips he had put to good use on my plump body nearing three weeks ago.

"Touche," he muttered defeated.

* * *

When I finally used the bathroom at home and saw a thin trail of red on my underwear, I think I was happier than I'd been during the last three Christmases combined. Tara and Mom noticed my joy but they knew I always freaked out a bit when my period was late anyway. They didn't know the real reason for my relief and I didn't bother to tell them.

Rushing off to the bar, I was disappointed when I arrived at the watering hole only to find out that Harry wasn't there. Ben told me that he hadn't been in all day but he'd had a dozy of a fight with the barfly the last night and told him not to show up again for a few days.

I quickly ran from this bar to that around the town looking for the man only to find out that he hadn't been in there either. As one last option, my heart jumping to that place of terror reserved for those times when something is unknown, I went to Harry's apartment. Knocking on the door at first, lightly, I soon found my fist pounding it forcefully enough to actually hurt.

"HARRY! HARRY!" I screamed, fearing he had left or, worst of all, had finally managed to kill himself.

A few minutes later, the door finally opened and the object of my affections stood there in an undershirt which had probably suffered cleanness years ago and abandoned it entirely to rejoice in a yellowing hue due to accumulated sweat. He looked at me with angry concern and I knew that he was expecting me to tell him that I was pregnant. He probably saw it as one more bit of bad news after having been thrown out of his favorite bar.

"I got my period," I said.

Harry's face brightened and I witnessed the return of his sweet smile, knowing already how much I had missed it.

The barfly stepped across the door's threshold and took me in his arms. He lifted me up for a few seconds and I laughed before he started to kiss my cheek and then lips.

"Oh little sister," he mumbled as he buried his face into the curve of my neck and held me tightly.

* * *

When my period ended, I became his Erin again too. Always with protection, of course. Instead of the pool table, though, we were lovers only at his apartment, in the same bed where once we had slept chastely together. The second time we made love, Harry was as sweet and considerate a lover I could hope for and we shared a tender time together afterwards lying in each other's arms, as opposed to the painful moments following our copulation on the pool table. He kissed me and stroked my face, confident now that his seed was safely blocked away from any egg which may have sneakily been lying in wait inside of my body.

I soon realized that to Harry the thought of my getting pregnant was doubly horrifying because it gave him a reason to keep on living if only just to protect me.

One night when my face was buried in his lap as he sat on the edge of the bed, his cock inside of my mouth and my tongue working it in both the way he had taught me and I had instinctively known, I listened for the sounds of his breathing that told me that I was doing a good job. Occassionally I looked up to his face, and the look of peace there and sexual bliss made the area inside my panties start to throb in it's own needful arousal also. But there were no condoms. We'd both forgotten them and I just kind of let the feeling burn pleasantly until I felt Harry's balls shift slightly in my hands and I knew he was about to come. I kept my mouth on the convulsing organ until it had given me all that it could and then pulled away and made a show of swallowing it for my lover. I had never thought I'd like doing that to Harry, thought it would be dirty, but I did; I liked the taste of him and the way I could turn him on. He touched the corner of my mouth where a small amount of his come had appeared and looked at me happily, stroking my left breast with his come covered finger.

I moaned from the touch and Harry suddenly stood and lifted me to my feet and then lowered me on to the bed. His mouth playing with my large chest while his fingers found their amusement lower, I soon found myself writhing and climaxing beneath him. Even after my orgasm, Harry continued to adore my breasts until he was quite happy and lay his head down on one as if it were a pillow while he teased my other nipple.

"I wish you could meet Mom and my sister," I stated, running my fingers through his hair.

"No," Harry disagreed. "They wouldn't understand the dynamics of our relationship."

"Mom dated an older teacher before she married my father," I countered.

"Teacher is the key word there," Harry mused. "All respectability and future. Was he a drunk this teacher?"

"I don't think so."

"I rest my case."

I thought about this as Harry found himself no longer content with just using his fingers on my nipple but decided to use his lips as well.

Shivering from pleasure again, I stated. "Why don't you try to get sober, Harry?" I asked.

Lifting his head, Harry looked down at me and smoothed my hair back. "It doesn't really matter anymore," he stated softly.

I shivered from his words but soon Harry brought his lips to my own and we kissed inside of our momentary Eden.

* * *

That was the return to an underlying note of unease in our relationship. For while Harry had warned me not to try to free him from his addiction, he had not successfully prevented me from bringing up the subject again in my more bolder moments. It always irritated the man. 

But loving him, I knew only how to try to help him, even if it was ineffective.

One weekend night, I watched Harry playing a game with one of his friends. The man was quiet, a black hustler from Chicago, named Louis, who made it his profession to move across the States in order to free white and bigoted pool players from their hard earned cash.

I liked watching Harry and Louis coverse together, a constant free form of verse and sometimes let me in on their clever repartee. What made me even happier was the way that Harry proudly introduced me as his girl to the black hustler and that Louis didn't seem to think it was upsetting that I was overweight.

I didn't like, however, the way that Harry had me continually running to the bar for Ben to refill his drink every fifteen minutes. Or the way that he had lost the way to complete a coherent thought about an hour in. Even Louis had stopped taking money from my man out of kindness or embarrassment.

"Go get me..." Harry ordered me.

Once again it was a sentence left hanging in the air; one that I was meant to complicitly understand and obey. I realized then, though, that the only thing making me get up and get the drinks for Harry was myself and I did not need to comply if I no longer wanted to.

"I won't Harry," I told him. "You've had too much already."

"I wha...?"

"I won't get it for you."

Harry looked at Louis and laughed. "She's good in...but doesn't under..."

My barfly staggered away from the table in order to stand in front of me. "Go and get me..."

"Your death?" I whispered. "No. You may succeed in killing yourself but I don't have to help you."

"You think you can save me?" Harry managed to finally form a sentence, urged on by his anger at my rebellion. "You've been trying for months now. Haven't you already realized, Erin? I'm halfway gone."

In the poor light of the room, I saw from the yellowish tint of his eyeballs and the same tint of his skin that he was probably right. I thought of his defeat when he had finally taken me and his certain belief that he would not be there for me and any child that came along. Harry knew, had known for months now, that he had finally booked his one way ticket on the train to the end of the station. There was just that final bit of an estimated time of arrival for him to finally learn: 6 months, 2 years or maybe 5 if he were lucky.

If we were lucky.

"Maybe you could have actually done it if I met you before...God knows...But now it's too late and I suggest you save yourself the pain and just get out of here. Take your memories and get the fuck out, little sister...Erin," Harry stated intelligibly. Finally telling me the news he had been sparing me from had sobered him faster than any cold water or a night's worth of sleep. 

Sorrow and desperation was what comprised his vision and he could no longer stand to stare into my eyes and see the agony inside of them. Instead he went off to buy another drink for, as he said, it no longer really mattered.

"I need some air," I said to Louis and he offered me a brief nod as I ran crying out the back door.

Once outside in the cool night air, I backed into the bricks of the wall in the alley and wept. It was almost in the same place where I had hastily changed into my schoolgirl uniform. My tears felt hot in my eyes but cool on my skin, the night breeze stealing their warmth after only a few seconds. Unbuttoning my blouse, I reached inside of my bra to feel for the nickel hidden within. I'd been keeping it there for the last few days and I suddenly knew deep inside that I had known that this was coming. Harry's death announcement had already been written on his face and in his movements. I had been too frightened to acknowledge it but had placed the nickel close to my heart for strength and comfort nonetheless.

I suddenly wished I had been pregnant afterall to have something more to remember him with than just a coin. But I would, I knew. I'd have the memories as the man claimed. And the permission to leave him right then and there.

Staring at the nickel in my palm, I thought about it and how if it were spent I would always wonder where it had gone to and regret not keeping it with me for as long as it was humanly possible. 

Drying my face I directed a prayer to my God in the alley's dark night sky, thanking Him for the fact that, even if He would be taking Harry soon, He had let him be born in the first place for me to know and to love. I placed my nickel back close to my heart and returned with resolve to the pool room at the back of the bar. Louis was no longer there. He might have been gone too, death having scared him away as it has the habit of doing. Or maybe he was simply off paying a visit to the bar or bathroom and would return in just a little while. 

Whichever it was, I was alone with Harry and once again I could not be sure if the water in his eyes were tears or not. Regardless of this ignorance, he raised them off of the table to meet mine when I closed the door behind me.

"I'm not here to save you," I said sorrowfully. "I just want to hold your hand and love you for as long as God let's me."

Our stare continued, not interrupted by so much as a blink, until Harry slowly nodded, mouthed the words "I love you," and then turned back to his now solitary game of pool, gratefully allowing me to stay and watch in silence as he slowly died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I expected the end of this story to be sad but not that sad. The ending was close to that from the beginning but not with Harry's death a given. But the story just went that way and it breaks my heart. I love Harry. I love this story. Thank you for reading.


End file.
